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E-PrinceThe ‘Prince’s readership already knows that WikiLeaks has raised various legal and moral questions, most of which remain unresolved. While it is important to respect the Princeton community’s diverse views on the larger issues surrounding WikiLeaks, it is ...(back to the article)
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If the government insists on only hiring persons who will tailor their reading, opinions, and knowledge to government demands, we should absolutely insist on only approving of students who do NOT do so. If the government thinks its business is indoctrination and ignorance, the university's business should still be education and knowledge.
"In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building." The Ministry of Truth is watching.
The fact that this isn't parody or fiction makes me very sad.
Can U expect a more upright position in a land where it is ok to deny Darwinism in education? The news reporting in US today is on level with that of the old Sovjet Union.
Having lived in Communist China soon after the Cultural Revolution, I can testify that this type of thinking--self censorship, fear of criticising those in power, and a willing avoidance of the truth--is very close to the mindset that prevailed there and then.
We become that which we oppose ...
Ah yes, people who will pretend that if they shut their eyes and wish real real hard, that the barn door was closed all along. Just who we, as US-Americans, should be hiring for sensitive jobs requiring security clearances.
What's also cool about this article, in terms of its, shall we say, pragmatic concern with whether or not affirmatively accessing this leaked material whether or not you can get that sweet internship at the CIA, is that it pretty much carries along with it the admission that the persons who do these security clearances cannot, actually, in-real-life ("irl") determine whether yon fresh-faced squeaky-clean smiley-faced Princetonian sitting before them in an interview is "an undergraduate researcher" or, alternatively "Kim Philby, Jr."
And I mean come on, "we're totally and completely incompetent, sorry, we can't figure out whether your BA thesis was part of some clever ploy to embed a mole ... right ... at the top of American intelligence!! So pretty please don't look at Wikileaks so as not to confuse us or do anything that will confound our naive checklist driven assessment" I mean, any government official responsible for security who says that should be fired for admitting in public they're incapable of doing their job.
And, in my opinion ("imo"), what's also cool is the subtext about whether its proper to read leaked classified materials which exist in a kind of a grey area in terms of the government's position on their legality, and the question of whether a willingness to do so might indicate, shall we say, improper attitudes towards classified documents and a flippancy about security matters. That subtext is totally cool because it reveals this, like, moral fear. As if handling these profane and dangerous objects will contaminate a person, rendering that person impure and ritually unclean.
All of which totally ignores the very practical fact that "gee whiz it's all out there, on the internet" for any putative enemies of US-America and its allies along with everyone who doesn't care what the government thinks to "do whatever they want with the material, analyze it however they want, and share whatever insights they gain" and in all this there's ... such a prime vision of awkward tie-tugging pearl-clutching disapproval of noncomformity that I just laff and laff and think about the possible apocryphal story of Secretary of State Henry Stimson closing the Cipher Bureau on the grounds of "gentlemen do not read each other's mail"
pure cowardice
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.